Citizens in Charge

Wyoming’s initiative and referendum pioneer was State Rep. L. C.
Tidball of Sheridan. In the early 1890s Tidball was one of the first state
legislators in the nation - possibly the very first - to introduce a bill to
amend a state constitution to provide for statewide I&R.

The Wyoming legislature waited 19 years before finally taking
favorable action on an I&R bill in 1912, after all the surrounding states had
already put I&R into their constitutions. It was favored by a six to one
margin of the voters who cast ballots on its ratification. It still failed to take
effect, however, because Wyoming constitutional amendments required
ratification by a “supermajority” of all the voters casting ballots in the
election, which made blank ballots count as “no” votes. By this standard,
the I&R amendment narrowly failed.

Finally, in 1968, Wyoming’s legislature passed an I&R amendment, and
it won voter ratification. But the procedures, specified by the legislature,
included the most difficult petition requirement for initiatives of any state
law in the nation: 15 percent of the number of ballots cast in the
preceding gubernatorial election. And it did not allow voters to propose
or vote on initiative constitutional amendments at all…(Click Here to Read the Rest of the Story of I&R in Wyoming)